


spun with the thread of destiny

by Nokomis



Category: Catwoman (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: (Obviously), Complicated Relationships, Crossing paths, Crossover, F/F, Temporary Character Death, selina has a type
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 09:02:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26849362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/pseuds/Nokomis
Summary: Haunt enough museums and you’re bound to catch the eye of a thief.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Selina Kyle
Comments: 15
Kudos: 67





	spun with the thread of destiny

**Author's Note:**

> Rainpuddle13 prompted me with 'Old Guard/Batman crossover' and _obviously_ this was the only possible thing to write. Hope you enjoy!

Selina isn’t precisely _casing_ the museum. She’s simply appreciating it, and if some of her appreciation comes from a professional capacity, well. She’s only human. 

But what appreciating the museum in detail means is that she’s spent afternoons here for the majority of the week, and each time she’s seen the same woman sweeping through. Most of the other patrons are tourists, a few art students mixed in with sketch pads and big dreams, but the woman, she sets off alarms in Selina’s mind.

There’s purpose to how she’s moving through the museum. Selina finds herself trailing the woman, watching as she stops by several of the exhibits. The woman looks at the items in a fond, almost nostalgic manner, as though she’s thinking of times past.

Selina’s never been much of one for sentimentality. 

She debates leaving it be, but the woman continually draws her eye. Selina’s used her appearance as a weapon for as long as she can remember, and she can tell from a glance that even though this woman is breathtaking, she doesn’t rely on that to fight her battles. There’s a steeliness in her posture that makes Selina think of Wonder Woman, a confidence that makes her think of a goddess made flesh. 

She waits until the woman pauses, standing before a display.

Selina stands next to her, wondering what it is that she’s seeing in the art. It’s a marble relief from the Hellenistic period depicting a long-haired woman staring into the distance. It’s lovely, but doesn’t speak to Selina in any meaningful way, and she decides that’s her opening.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Selina smiles at the woman.

“Yes,” she says, and strides to the next piece. It was very clearly a cold shoulder, and Selina wouldn’t normally pursue, except there is something _familiar_ in the set of this woman’s shoulders.

She reminds her of Bruce, Selina realizes abruptly, rewriting her earlier thoughts of Wonder Woman. There isn’t an otherworldly sense of power, simply honed human ability. Or-- Shiva, perhaps. Like her body was a weapon, that every movement could just as easily have taken someone down as anything else. That she’d been honed into a blade of her own making. 

She moves like someone who has no need to fear death, who knows they would only inflict it on their enemies.

Well. That makes her the most interesting thing in the museum.

Selina follows her, standing shoulder-to-shoulder again. “Do you have a special appreciation for the Hellenistic period?”

A narrow-eyed look; more of a reaction than Selina would have thought for her softball question. Interesting. “The average, I’d say.”

“Isn’t average not at all, or average for the type of person who spends hours in this particular wing of the museum?” Selina flashes a distracting smile and offers her hand. “Selina.”

“Andy,” the woman says, giving a firm, quick shake of her hand. She offers nothing else, clearly hoping for Selina to abandon the conversation.

Selina isn’t the type to give up on a mystery. Curiosity and the cat, and all that. “Well?”

A cold glance. “My only interest is out of an appreciation for the past.”

*

Selina sees her twice more that week. Once alone, wearing the same steely expression she’d worn during their conversation, and another time accompanied by two gentlemen who seemed miraculously capable of making Andy smile, bright and lovely.

It’s that smile that sparks something in her memory. Selina’s spent endless hours in museums at this point in her life, has looked closely at so many works of art, at so many carefully depicted faces immortalized in marble or paint or clay.

Andy laughs, and Selina thinks she’s seen it before.

*

Selina couldn’t let it go.

She should -- she’d avoid a lot of trouble in life if she were a woman capable of simply letting things lie, of forgetting things -- but the early hours of the morning find her standing on the museum’s roof, wearing her catsuit and wondering how she would explain this away should a cape show up.

There aren’t even any likely themed objects in the museum; nothing feline at all that she could pretend an interest in. Her interest is solely in unraveling a mystery of a woman.

She prowls through the halls, silent and usually protected by security she’s already undermined. It’s her favorite way to visit museums, and then she ends up in the Renaissance wing. It’s not a painting, nothing by a noted artist, that she seeks out.

There’s a sketch, undated, encased in glass and preserved for centuries. The lines of the woman’s face are undeniable.

Selina takes it home with her. A little souvenir.

A little mystery, to bat at when she’s bored, like a cat with a ball of yarn.

She half-wonders if her first impression -- _goddess made flesh_ \-- wasn’t so inaccurate after all.

*

She sees Andy once, twice more. In different cities, on different continents. She approaches each time, offers a smile and a kind word, and comes away feeling like she’s danced too close to the edge of a cliff.

She’s made herself known. 

It’s thrilling, in a way that Selina doesn’t examine too closely.

*

Now that Selina’s caught on, now that she knows that there’s more things in heaven and earth than she’d dreamt, even in this world filled with aliens and goddesses, she can’t help but unravel the thread.

Can’t help but seek out works of art that depict that face, and can’t help but to liberate a few. 

It’s not meant to cause harm. These days, an awful feeling that Selina refuses to call guilt causes her to leave substantial donations in her wake. She’s taken enough through the years that she doesn’t _need_ more, she has more than enough money to live on hidden away. Taking an artifact here and there, these days, feels more like a crime than it did when she was hungry.

But when she finds a piece bearing Andy’s face, she can’t help it. There’s no market for them, she can’t fence them for anything near what they’re worth, but she amasses a small collection anyway. Most are taken from storage in the bowels of various museums, unremarkable except for their subject. She notices the faces that repeat, the warrior queen in particular, and Selina wonders where she is now. What stories Andy might tell.

She seeks out more art, gathers more questions.

Buys a vault, stores them away. 

Hopes she’ll get caught.

*

There’s a blade against her neck.

Selina stands stock-still, breathing as slowly and evenly as possible, feeling the cold metal press gently against her neck. The cold is biting, especially since the flat of the blade is what’s pressed against her, though she knows one flick of the wrist and the edge will slice through her throat.

“Friend or foe?” Selina asks, trying equally for levity and to humanize herself, hoping her assailant will say something identifying. 

“Both,” came the answer, and Selina knows that voice. Knows the huskiness, knows the way the words are formed oh so carefully, but can never quite hide the faintest shell of an accent. “Neither.”

Fear and adrenaline coalesce into something far more potent.

She’s put together enough to know how deadly Andy is with a sword, knows exactly the danger that she’s in, and her hand strays to her hip, grasping onto the handle of her bullwhip. She cuts her eyes to the side, and Andy is standing there, arm extended, sword held gracefully, like it’s part of her body. Selina appreciates her form, appreciates the silence approach that even Selina didn’t notice.

“Lovely evening,” Selina says. The blade doesn’t give, and Andy’s eyes are steady on her.

“You need to leave me be,” Andy says. Her voice is unwavering. “Go back to your dismal city.”

“Make me,” Selina says, eyes never leaving Andy’s. They’re so close, she can feel the brush of Andy’s knee against her own, can practically taste Andy’s lips. Andy’s eyes dart down to look at Selina’s mouth, just for the barest second, and--

Selina cracks the whip without warning.

She’d timed it right; Andy had been distracted enough that she hadn’t seen the movement. It breaks Andy’s focus, causes the sword to dip just enough that Selina feels confident in flinging herself back. 

The edge of the roof is right where she thought it was, and the last thing she expects is for Andy to follow her off it. Selina makes a last-second grab for her, just as her whip coils around a flagpole like she’d planned and sends her swinging back towards the roof, but Andy doesn’t reach for her, and Selina misses.

Andy crumples in the pavement below

Selina stares over the edge of the ceiling at the unnatural tilt of Andy’s neck, knowing what it means. She’s seen it before, and this is going to haunt her. Why hadn’t Andy just reached her hand out, just the slightest bit? Selina could have saved her, could have…

A twitch. 

Andy’s shoulder twitched, and after a second she stands, cracking her neck as though it hadn’t just been broken. 

Selina covers her mouth with her hand, watches as Andy salutes up at her, then strides down the road, as if she hadn’t just died on that pavement and reanimated before Selina’s eyes.

After all she’s seen, somehow Selina’s still capable of being surprised.

*

Every time she sees Andy, she’s unchanged as the paintings that surround them.

Selina isn’t; each time she’s bearing more marks from the world they live in. A few more scars, a wrinkle she hadn’t noticed before. Changeable as the tides, as the winds, as every natural force in the world.

Selina catches glimpses of her in sketches throughout the world, and their chance meetings -- a glimpse of her in the dark, a brush of a shoulder in a cafe, a quiet word in the shadow of a cathedral -- happen in locations just as varied. Madrid, Taipei, Cairo. Selina finds herself _hoping_ each time she journeys outside Gotham.

They’re rare, bright spots, and Selina doesn’t dare allow herself to feel disappointment when they don’t happen.

*

This time, it’s more than an idle hunt. 

Selina’s sought out works of art featuring Andy’s face before, but this feels more intimate. It’s a deliberate act, and cannot be construed as anything but what it is.

There is a rich man in a forgotten city, on the outskirts of a Middle Eastern desert. Selina had an eye for jewels; sparkly things had always appealed to her first and foremost. She’d realized that a particular necklace had appeared in several works of art featuring Andy, then had disappeared in later art. When a lifetime stretched over centuries, it had to be easy to misplace things; she’d done enough jobs for unsavory types to know that.

The necklace was distinctive -- of an early style, beaten gold and bearing a rough-cut emerald. Selina had felt it was familiar, and had soon realized it was; she’d come across an image of it in an auction she’d once been invited to.

It takes a little digging, but she finds out the owner’s name. A single word describes his location, and Selina swallows her pride and asks for help from both the most and least likely person.

Talia laughs, and gives the information freely. “I know who this belonged to,” she says, finger tracing the image along the curved lines of the necklace. “She and her guard have come up against my father. She’s formidable.”

Selina knows there’s a price for this information, and from the soft pity in Talia’s eyes, she knows what it is. Talia thinks she’s sending her to her death, and regrets it, because it’s not an honorable way to remove an obstacle.

Talia has always underestimated her.

Selina takes the information. Formulates a plan. There’s no timeline, which simplifies it greatly -- she simply keeps watch from half a world away, and when the man leaves, she slips in.

The necklace is valuable but nothing irreplaceable, and it’s simple enough to crack the security and take it as her own. She’s tempted to steal more; she’s researched the man enough to know his reach, the power he holds. She’s tempted to tell Pam about the environmental atrocities he’s done, but she remembers how easily Talia gave her the information and knows this is not a battle she’s interested in.

The necklace is more than prize enough.

*

Seeking Andy out has never been her goal, but with ancient gold weighing down her hidden pocket, it suddenly feels like it ought to be.

They aren’t entwined enough for it to feel like a betrayal, but Selina knows she’s crossing a line when she picks at the mystery that is Andy, when she finds a loose thread in a former CIA operative, when she uses resources she shouldn’t have access to to find out that he definitely knows more than she does.

She breaks into his apartment easily; it’s hardly a challenge after the places she’s cracked. She anticipates a search; she doesn’t anticipate finding all her answers laid out bare, thumbtacked to a board.

Her theories were both spot on and not nearly comprehensive enough. She’d known some of this, but hadn’t understood that Andy had been quietly working for the betterment of humanity for the last few millennia.

Damn if Selina doesn’t have a _type_.

She takes pictures of the board, does a quick search for more information, to see where Andy might be next, but Selina can already work on a few theories based on what she’s seen. She leaves the place undisturbed, knowing that Copley will never even know she’d been there.

When she finds Andy, two weeks and a continent later, surrounded by a dozen dead traffickers, she drapes the necklace across the barrel of her gun. “No good deed ever went unpunished,” she says with a wink.

She’s gone by morning.

*

There’s something different, now, in the way Andy carries herself. 

Selina never expected to see her in Gotham; Andy has avoided it as long as Selina has known her. Whether it’s because Gotham already had a protector or because of Selina herself, she’s never been quite sure. Thankful, but never sure.

That’s all in the past, now. Andy’s standing in the middle of her living room, as though she’d been invited. Selina ought to be used to that, for all the nocturnal visitors she’s had, but there’s something different about it in the early afternoon. She smiles at Selina, a weary-worn smile, and says, “I need to lay low. Thought you were the one to see.”

Selina watches as she moves across the room, and it’s different than the Andy she’d seen in museums, brushing off death, bearing a sword. Her posture’s the same, shoulders held back but something vital -- part of that unshakeable confidence -- is missing.

Something’s added, though. Andy now wears the necklace she’d procured around her neck, tangled up with the one she’s always worn.

“I’m always up for an interesting time,” Selina says. Andy’s been through interesting times since they’d last met, and Selina hopes she’ll hear about them.

It isn’t just her posture that’s different; Selina’s close enough to notice the faintest sparkle of an errant gray hair. Andy has never changed, not in the time Selina has known her, but now... 

It looks as though mortality has caught up with her.

Selina has a thousand questions, and Andy looks like she’s willing to answer none of them. She hasn’t lost her drive -- her focus is still the same -- but Selina’s known her long enough now that such a drastic change as Andy feeling even the slightest uncertain in herself feels like the world’s shifted beneath their feet.

If things have changed so much, there’s no sense in keeping some things hidden.

“Well, as long as you’re here,” Selina says, and leads Andy through the convoluted pathways through the hidden innards of the building to the vault she’d kept in secret for years now. 

“You know that I find lost things,” Selina says, gesturing around the vault. Andy’s face is still, and Selina doesn’t know what her next move is going to be, whether it’ll be fueled by anger or by… something else. “And you, my dear, have been lost for a very long time.”

“I’m not looking to be found.” 

Selina pressed herself against Andy’s side, dragging a fingertip along her ear. “Of course not, what fun is that?”

A twist, and Selina’s pressed up against the wall of the vault. A painting clatters to the ground, priceless but irrelevant in the presence of its subject. Selina was right; Andy hasn’t lost her ferocity, only her invincibility. That’s easy enough to overcome.

“What do you want?” Andy’s close enough that her lips brush Selina’s as she speaks.

“Oh, isn’t it obvious?” Selina cast her eyes around the vault. Andromache of Scythia stares down at them from every corner. She leaned in close, breathing the words into Andy’s ear. “I take exactly what I want.”

And so she did.


End file.
